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Boreades


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Mick Harper wrote:
You will need the AE position on Black Lives Matter. First and always is to drill down far enough to reach the bedrock of fact on which to build. .


Let me know when you get to the bedrock of demographics of victims -v- perpetrators of crime on BAME people.

You might suggest it might be considered non-PC to mention that the greatest percentage of crime on BAME people (as the victims) is also perpetrated by BAME people. Can the perpetrators also claim to be victims? I couldn't possibly comment.

Down 'ere in Deepest Wessex (oo arr), I'm too busy arranging for a statue of Sir Francis Drake to be pulled down. He's got form.
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Mick Harper
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Let me know when you get to the bedrock of demographics of victims -v- perpetrators of crime on BAME people.

Why? First of all you have pulled the oldest trick in the book: when addressing one category (blacks) you casually switch it for another category (BAME). You then repeat the trick by switching one problem (white policemen, black victims) for another one (perpetrators, victims, crime generally)

You might suggest it might be considered non-PC to mention that the greatest percentage of crime on BAME people (as the victims) is also perpetrated by BAME people. Can the perpetrators also claim to be victims? I couldn't possibly comment.

This is true but irrelevant to the matter in hand. If it were not true, would it affect the Black Lives Matter campaign in any way?

Down 'ere in Deepest Wessex (oo arr), I'm too busy arranging for a statue of Sir Francis Drake to be pulled down. He's got form.

Since this has come to encapsulate where Black Lives Matter is seemingly headed, perhaps it merits thought rather than jocularism.
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Boreades


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Mick Harper wrote:
Let me know when you get to the bedrock of demographics of victims -v- perpetrators of crime on BAME people.

Why? First of all you have pulled the oldest trick in the book: when addressing one category (blacks) you casually switch it for another category (BAME). You then repeat the trick by switching one problem (white policemen, black victims) for another one (perpetrators, victims, crime generally)


I do assure you that was not a trivial slight of hand. If you are looking for bedrock, you're on an geology field trip. There's more than one layer to dig through, and like much geology the layers get twisted and interwoven. I think that's enough metaphor.

Mick Harper wrote:
Down 'ere in Deepest Wessex (oo arr), I'm too busy arranging for a statue of Sir Francis Drake to be pulled down. He's got form.

Since this has come to encapsulate where Black Lives Matter is seemingly headed, perhaps it merits thought rather than jocularism.


I do assure you that my Irish and Scottish ancestors did not find it at all jocular when Sir Francis Drake aided and abetted Sir Henry Sidney and the Earl of Essex to dispose of troublesome natives.

the constable, his family, and one of the hostages were given safe passage and all other defending soldiers were killed, and on 26 July 1575, Norreys' forces hunted the old, sick, very young and women who were hiding in the caves. Despite the surrender, they killed all the 200 defenders and more than 400 civilian men, women and children. Drake was also charged with the task of preventing any Scottish reinforcement vessels reaching the Island.

But (AFAIK) they weren't black, so they're not relevant to the Black Lives Matter context.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rathlin_Island_massacre
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Mick Harper
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I do assure you that was not a trivial slight of hand. If you are looking for bedrock, you're on an geology field trip. There's more than one layer to dig through, and like much geology the layers get twisted and interwoven. I think that's enough metaphor.

You illustrate precisely why the AE requirement of 'one input, one output' is essential as opposed to this typical expression of throwing up one's hands and declaring a moral morass. You have indeed turned a technique into a metaphor. But I'll leave you to go off ancestor-worshipping.

Once you concentrate on Black Lives Matter and its true manifestation in the real world, that black lives don't matter, you can begin to offer useful insights. For example, a fascinating experiment was undertaken in New Jersey whereby a thoroughly corrupt and notably anti-black police force was abolished, then reconstituted the next day. Except now they could just write a completely new rule book. With apparently very good effect. It turns out that police forces are not institutionally racist, it's just that since black lives don't matter (all that much even where they are numerically a major demographic) policemen just get into the habit of dissing the blacks because nobody seems to mind very much. Police are like everybody else, they will follow the path of least resistance. They'd beat us all up if they had their way, it's the easiest way of achieving law and order. We were all 'black' not so long ago. You have to put it into the rule book -- assuming you think that's the way to go.

The point is, the AE point is, that once you accept reality you can (maybe) do something about it. But if everyone is just shouting "Black Lives Matter!" when they really don't, then nothing much will happen. Do not accuse me of vacuity at this point, I have no idea what is necessary at this point. I only know what not to do.
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Mick Harper
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One thing not to do is to listen to white liberals. It is true their policy of reactive gradualism has actually worked quite well and no doubt, in so far as they are still in charge, they will react to the current brouhaha with further useful ameliorations. But the one thing the current brouhaha has illustrated is that the Black Lives Matter campaign has meant that at least for a short while black lives do matter because entire nation states can be put into a state of alarm every time a white cop kills a black man.

For a short time. Remember, in America, white schoolchildren's lives don't matter because every time a coupla dozen of them get gunned down by a fed-up classmate, everyone just compares it with all the other times and carries on regardless. In Canada, Britain and New Zealand entire nation states have to give up their handguns (or whatever). Though blacks (and white radicals) should beware that such nuclear options are inherently unstable. Or possibly, they might argue, that's the point.
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Wile E. Coyote


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Seems to Wiley the Blacks lives matter is nothing new. This is really just a version of the 70s white man's guilt anti-imperialism, anti-colonialism, occurring within the nation state. Remember black sections within the labour movement.

There is plenty of evidence that new arrivals in a country of whatever colour start at the bottom, in poor quality jobs, housing, and this means they do whatever it takes to climb the ladder, both within and outside the law, whilst the rest of us sit on arses, happily but occasionally feeling bad for them. The willingness to make a better life and do better than the previous generation, means that many more from the Black community will join and some overtake the middle classes. They will then start worrying about the Romanians and Poles. Polish was the new Black, until Brexit. The Russian, Eastern European gang, engaged in trafficking, is now a TV favourite. Thankfully your police can beat these folks up without folks caring.
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Mick Harper
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Sorry but while all this may be true it is not relevant here, and not just because describing blacks as 'new arrivals' is a bit weird whether in America or Britain. These are the sorts of things that are relevant:

1. Consider the case of a cop killing a Chinese person (ethnic or citizen). Does his life matter? Too right it does, because our ambassador in Peking will be in pronto for a right dressing down. If a black person is killed, will Our Man in Kingston, Jamaica be summoned?

2. Do Jewish lives matter? Too right they do, we'll never hear the end of it.

3. Do white British lives matter? Depends. In the Troubles it was always reckoned that killing one person in London was worth killing twenty in Belfast.

4. Do our elected representatives' lives matter? Depends. That woman MP offed by the right-wing loonie practically derailed the body politic. But there was a Tory MP knifed in his surgery by a non-denominational loonie a bit before and that barely made it into the Evening Standard.

5. Do black lives matter? None that I can think of. Even if Obama had been assassinated it would have been seen as mostly a legacy thing.
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Mick Harper
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We can apply some of these tactical considerations in the matter of statue toppling. We can all agree, I think, that the Edward Colston offing was a complete triumph. Why? First of all because he was an actual slave trader, second because the ceremonial early bath in Bristol dock was such magnificent theatre but thirdly ... most importantly ... any guesses? Because it was the first. After that it was just, "Look, ma, aren't we having fun." And of course they quickly ran out of slavers and had to make do with people from rather unfashionable periods of history.

Meanwhile the onlooking populace -- even young police-harassed black men -- were growing restive at why Oxford university types were shaking their fists at a very distant gargoyle who, it had to be explained, was Cecil Rhodes. So, Black Lives Matterpeople, remember you've got to keep your own base engaged while simultaneously keeping the rest of the population hoping not to be engaged. The irony is that the best way of doing this is to hope and pray a white policeman kills a black person quite soon.
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Boreades


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Don't mention the cricket team.

An episode of sitcom Fawlty Towers has been taken off UKTV's streaming service because it contains "racial slurs".

In the 1975 episode, Basil Fawlty declares "don't mention the war" around German guests, while the Major uses highly offensive language about the West Indies cricket team.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-53020335
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Grant



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I feel I must tediously point out the fallacy in the BLM argument. More blacks are treated badly by the police than whites, but there is one simple reason - blacks are ten times more likely to steal, rape or murder that whitey. Pretty soon any policeman learns to watch out for young black men - even black policemen learn the lesson. It's a very clear case of careful ignoral. What to do about this I have no idea, but we certainly need some plain speaking from our useless government. Problem is that would require something our fat, blond leader is lacking - courage
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Mick Harper
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This is, I agree, at the heart of the problem. Unless you wish to live in a police state in which everybody is a target, the police are spread thin and must resort to profiling, whether it is called this or not. As I have mentioned before, I have myself been profiled in three guises: a mod, a hippy and a druggy. All these things are voluntary choices on my part, all are to some extent worthy of police attention, I can have no complaint if I am profiled.

Blacks have no choice about being black but they do collectively have a choice about being profiled. Black women, elderly black males are not profiled. But all young black males and middle aged black males driving flash cars are profiled. And for the reasons you mention, Grant. It's tough on individual black males going about their lawful occasions but guilt-by-association is an unavoidable part of profiling.

However we are AE-ists and have to go to the next level. We should recognise -- as neither black nor white liberal spokespeople ever do -- that there is not the slightest prospect of black males changing their collective behaviour, so we have to factor that in. Nor merely pat ourselves on the back for being (on this) correctly illiberal.
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Mick Harper
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What to do about this I have no idea

When the army got to Northern Ireland in 1969, the Catholic population was generally pro-army because they needed protection from the Prods. Then the Catholic IRA started up and the army was obliged to profile Catholics. This was understood. But the army's idea of profiling is to shove you up against a wall and generally piss you off even though the chances that you were both a Catholic and a member of the IRA was quite small. Result: the Catholic population was soon generally, indeed universally and bitterly, anti-army.

Spool ahead to the rash of gang murders of blacks by blacks in London now. The police told 'the black community' that more aggressive stop-and-search i.e. profiling would help stem the problem. If every stop-and-search was conducted with the maximum of there-but-for-the-grace-of-God gentility, witnessed by body cams, it might be a win-win. But are the police capable of this? Is your fat, blond friend and Pritti "They called me a Paki" Patel capable of enforcing it? Like I say, I'm switching to Starmer.
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Boreades


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As you mentioned the Catholic population, I'm moved to mention the rapid conflation of issues. It seems to be heading in a "we're all black now" direction.

This is a petition to urge Leeds City Council to remove the statue of 19th century Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel.

Why?

Peel created the London Metropolitan Police in 1829, the ideas for which he developed while overseeing the British colonial occupation of Ireland. He was pivotal in setting up the police forces which maintained British rule in Ireland and a system which led to the poverty, famine and displacement of Irish people.

Even more conflating of issues?

Colonialism and racism - in this case anti-catholic sentiment - are central to British history. Not only that but with the legitimacy of current policing in question, the history of policing, its origins in colonialism and its role in suppressing dissent deserves greater scrutiny.

Confusing racism with religious intolerance? Oh well. But that mention of "anti-catholic sentiment" made me wonder - how far back do you want to go? And are there any statues of Queen Elizabeth the First that might need protecting. It seems there is at least one...

Tucked up in a niche on the wall of the church of St Dunstan’s in the West on Fleet St London, stands Queen Elizabeth I. It is London’s oldest statue and the only one remaining that was carved in Queen Elizabeth’s reign. The statue was carved in 1586 and originally stood above Ludgate at the entrance to the city of London. Statues to King Lud and his two sons, Androgeus and Theomantius, stood with Queen Elizabeth and can be found in the porch of St Dunstans. They too were carved in 1586. During the demolition ...

(when the old Ludgate was removed in 1760)

... the statue of Queen Elizabeth was placed in the basement of a nearby pub for safety and was only discovered by workmen in 1839. They were removed to the old St Dunstans by Sir Gosling, who arranged for the statue to be put on the St Dunstan’s church which itself was re-built in 1833.

https://www.intriguing-history.com/queen-elizabeth-i-statue-london/

Is there a statute of limitations on statues?
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Boreades


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Will The Guardian newspaper call for itself to be pulled down?

Upon the news of President Lincoln’s assassination, the Guardian described the president’s time in office as “abhorrent”, specifically the Proclamation of Emancipation – the act that declared “all persons held as slaves” within the rebellious states “are, and henceforward shall be free.”

Founded by John Edward Taylor

John Edward Taylor (11 September 1791 – 6 January 1844) was an English business tycoon, editor, publisher and member of The Portico Library, who was the founder of the Manchester Guardian newspaper in 1821, which was renamed in 1959 The Guardian.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Edward_Taylor

His Wiki entry strangely makes no mention of how he made his fortune.

The Guardian newspaper – founded by a man whose fortune was made on the back of the slave-intense cotton trade.


Perhaps the (Manchester Guardian's) opposition to emancipation of slaves was driven by the views of their founder, John Edward Taylor, who made his money in the cotton trade – an industry that prospered on the backs of cotton-picking slaves. After the death of their founder in 1844, the paper continued its relationship with its cotton merchant advertisers, going as far as demanding Manchester’s cotton workers, who refused to touch cotton picked by US slaves, should be forced back into work.

Guardianistas may well say "It was different times, and it was different after Scott took over".

His younger son, also John Edward Taylor (though usually known as Edward) (1830–1905) became a co-owner of the Manchester Guardian in 1852 and sole owner four years later. .... He had no children; after his death the Evening News passed into the hands of his nephews in the Allen family, while the Guardian was sold to its editor, his cousin C. P. Scott.
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Mick Harper
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You redeem yourself, sirrah.
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